112 
INCORRECT USE OF COMMON NAMES. 
(6) COMMON NAMES USED TO DENOTE SINGLE OR INDIVIDUAL SPECIES. 
When people speak and write in the singular about “bangalay” or “jarrah ’ 
or “tuart” or “tallow-wood” or “mountain ash” or “yellow box” or “brown 
stringybark” we understand that they are applying the terms to particular trees 
or species not to groups. Used in this specific sense, some of the common names 
may have an interest and appropriateness in limited forest areas in Australia. A 
few are identical with names that were applied to the trees by the aboriginal 
inhabitants, and may serve, like some place names, to remind the white man that 
he was preceded in the occupation of his country by a race that is passing forever 
away. A few may recall events and experiences in early Colonial history. A 
few others are interesting as indicating the role of the simple woodman in naming 
the objects with which he had to deal in his new sphere of labour. 
But when we take the whole range of the Australian States into view we find 
in the use of these common or bushmen’s names a most embarrassing amount of 
inconsistency and confusion. It is not suggested here that this state of things could 
have been prevented. The good and brave people who first made homes in the vast 
new land of Australia were equipped for practical work, not for the naming of 
trees. There were thousands of strange trees to be named, and in the average 
man s language not enough names to go round. The purpose of this article is to 
show that, so far as New Zealand is concerned, the confusion inherited from an 
earlier generation need not be and must not be perpetuated. The common 
nomenclature has woven around the eucalypts a network of false notions and 
prejudices. This must be removed if these wonderful and beautiful trees are ever 
to take their due place in the world’s forestry. 
A few examples will show how utterly hopeless the common nomenclature is 
as a scheme for discriminating between the numerous individual species of the 
genus. We find in the vernacular listing of the trees four or five “blue gums”, an 
indefinite number of “red gums”, two or three “grey gums”, and several “white 
gums , sixteen to twenty stringybarks , five or six “peppermints”, about twenty 
“boxes”, eleven “ironbarks”, ten or eleven “mahoganies”, and eight “bloodwoods”; 
three or four “cabbage gums” and about as many “apples”; five “blackbutts” whose 
butts are otten not black; one or two “swamp gums” that do not grow in swamps; 
a manna gum that is not the only manna yielder; a sugar gum ’ from which it 
would be no easy matter to extract sugar; a “cider gum” so called because 
somebody imagined that its sap tasted a little like cider; two or three “messmates” 
that do not always “mess” (grow) with the same “mates” (species) ; and, lastly, 
a “bastard mahogany” that is as well and nobly born as any aristocrat of the good 
old times. 
There are no true ironbarks and no red gums in Tasmania, yet both names 
have been applied to trees in that Island. Of the true mainland ironbarks two 
species are called “narrow-leaved” and two “broad-leaved”, while one has the 
awkward distinction of having been called “white”, “black”, “grey”, and “red” in 
a single locality. (Baker Hardwoods pp. 502 and 503; Maiden Grit Revis ii 
105). 
